In this Aug 15, 2012 file photo, Gov. Jerry Brown kicks off his campaign for Proposition 30, a November ballot initiative that would temporarily increase sales and income taxes, during his visit to New Technology High School in Sacramento.

The coming year may establish a new high, or perhaps more accurately, a new low, depending on what you think of taxes.

Californians already pay nearly the highest state income tax rate, the highest sales tax rate, among the highest corporate tax rates, almost the highest gasoline tax and countless other steep taxes far too numerous to list here. Yet, Californian voters are asked on the Nov. 6 ballot to increase their taxes even more.

Proposition 30 would hike income taxes on high earners and sales taxes on consumers. Over the four to seven years these temporary taxes would be in effect, they may raise about $50 billion. We prefer to say they will take, not raise, $50 billion because that’s what yours truly thinks of taxes.

Prop. 38 is an alternative to Prop. 30 that would increase income taxes on nearly all income-earners. It would raise about $10 billion a year, or maybe $120 billion over the lifetime of the taxes. In their benevolence, those who decide such things determined that only one of these two tax increases can pass – the one that gets more votes, but only if it gets a majority.

Another measure on the ballot, Prop. 39, would ding out-of-state-based companies to the tune of another billion dollars a year. But, as they say on late-night TV infomercials, “Wait! That’s not all!”

Statewide, there are 237 local ballot measures seeking bonds, taxes or fees, totaling more than $14 billion, the Sacramento Bee reports. Had enough? We’ve only just begun.

California’s landmark carbon cap-and-trade law, essentially a new tax on companies that emit CO2 into the air (the same stuff you emit when you exhale), is estimated to cost a mere $3,857 a year per California household after the companies pass on this new expense to customers. None of the other 49 states has had the temerity to enact such a punitive, unnecessary tax. Yet.

Lest we forget, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says taxes will go up by a collective $536 billion if Congress permits the Bush tax cuts to expire Dec. 31, part of the so-called fiscal cliff. Just to be clear, that’s $536 billion more than is paid now. The Bush-era tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 lowered federal income tax rates for everyone, capital-gains taxes and the dividend income tax rate, while eliminating the estate tax and reducing the marriage penalty, among other things.

If those taxes return in the coming year, it works out to about a $3,500 higher tax bill per household. We’re running out of room here, so we won’t list the 20 new or higher taxes on American families and small businesses buried in the murky verbiage of Obamacare, some of which have already gone into effect.

An unbiased observer might look at these tax increases and rightly conclude, “Wow!”

Yours truly is not unbiased, but instead shares the view of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall who concluded nearly 200 years ago, “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.”

It’s just a hunch, but the tax protesters who gave rise to our republic might amend their fighting words were they to visit contemporary America. “No taxation without representation,” it seems likely, could well be re-worded to: “No taxation without justification.”

It’s one thing to tax people who have no say in the process. Even in such an undemocratic scheme it is conceivable that a tax still could be justified, for example, if it pays for the legitimate work of a government to protect peoples’ rights.

But it’s quite another thing to tax people without justification, whether they have a voice in the decision or not. Our republic went off the rails when tax-passing legislators began to view government as provider, rather than as protector.

If government’s justifiable role is to protect God-given rights, as our founders presumed, then taxing powers necessarily are justified when limited to paying for that protection, whether representation is present or not.

But when government presumes to provide rather than to protect, no amount of representation can bestow legitimacy on taxes for that purpose. Government as protector is a blend of Robin Hood and Sugar Daddy, taking from those who own to give to others who want. It’s redistribution of wealth driven by political motives.

The tax problem has been with us since a majority of decision makers discovered that some could live at others’ expense. Consequently, now when battles are waged over excessive taxes, they too often don’t focus on the real evil – the destructive nature of taxes.

Too often when opposition is mounted against a foolish, extravagant, unnecessary government program it is mounted by a group not opposed to the spending on the grounds that the government shouldn’t be spending money for such a purpose. Instead, they oppose it because, in their view, the government should spend the money on a different foolish, extravagant, unnecessary program. It’s not the spending they object to, per se. It’s that the taxes aren’t being spent they way they want it spent.

That’s how taxation devolved to, “My special interest deserves the tax money more than your special interest does,” rather than weighing whether the warring special interests are legitimate expenditures in the first place.

Too few voices draw the line where it should be: The government shouldn’t spend taxes to fulfill wants and desires like consumers shopping for gifts or to feed their own appetites.

Sadly, rather than eliminating illegitimate taxes, politicians resort to bribing taxpayers with their own money. They offer rebates, credits and clever reductions in taxes, but not to every taxpayer equally. This is how political power is wielded. It’s the power to reward and punish. Or, as Marshall put it, the power to destroy. It has little, if anything, to do with protecting rights.

Mark Landsbaum is a Christian husband, father, grandfather and journalist who has written for a living for 43 years, ever since discovering he had no particular talents. He can be found on Facebook and LinkedIn, and in the archives of the Orange County Register, where he wrote a column for 10 years.

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